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IS GOD PLEASED WITH US?

11/01/2019 00:43:00 By David Mathse

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“I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity,” 1 Chronicles 29:17 NIV. “I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness,” 1 Chronicles 29:17 KJV.

Thank you reader for stopping to read this short article and before I wrote it I prayed for you; for you to stop and read it. And having read, to find peace with God.

Reader I have taken the above scripture from a book which gives part of the accounts of the entire history of the people of God; a book which evaluates the religious history of that nation. In the scripture we hear David, the King of Israel, praying and blessing God for all that he and the people had offered and prepared to build the house of their God.

King David specifically tells God that he and the people had offered willingly, uprightly and from their hearts to God. And he says; “For I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and has pleasure in uprightness” (KJV).

And another version of the Bible says; “I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity” (NIV). He is talking from his personal knowledge of God. And he is not talking about God to other people; but he is talking to God about God. He is saying ‘I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity’; no doubt or hesitation about it.

Integrity means the singleness or unity between what we say and what we do; that there is no difference or discrepancy between what we appear to be on the outside and who we are on the inside. It is living according to what we say we believe. Reader, integrity will normally reveal itself when we live it out in a corrupt society. It is the opposite of a blameful or evil approach to life.

Prophet Samuel was sent by God to anoint someone as king. He looked at Eliab and said; “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before me.” But God corrected the prophet. God told him; “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart,” 1 Samuel 16:7. To God it is not how we look, but what we are; not what we say but what we do.

God is pleased when He finds integrity and uprightness in our hearts; our hearts as individuals, and in our hearts as families; our hearts as employers and in our hearts as employees; in our hearts as leaders and in our hearts as a people.

This is not to mean we should be found to be ‘already perfected’. For people of integrity do sin and fall. They do make mistakes but they are quick to confess their sins and failures and get up and press on, ‘forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead’ (Phil.2:13). And we know that it is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that sins are washed away.

And we know also, reader, that one day when Jesus went out of the water on his baptism in the River Jordan, a voice that came down from heaven said; “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt.3:17).

So it is that when we receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour of our lives, we are justified by that faith and have peace with God through Him. Jesus Christ deals with the sin that separates us from God, and through Him we become acceptable to God. So why not accept Jesus Christ and have peace with God dear reader? I am Reverend David Mathse of The Family of God Church International, Matsapha.